


Maximum Potential Intensity I: Confounding Factors

by StHoltzmann



Series: New Toys [5]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst and Porn, BDSM, Cliffhangers, Dubious Science, F/F, Feels, I'm so so sorry, LGBTQ Female Character, Rope Bondage, Sex Toys, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 09:07:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7971064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StHoltzmann/pseuds/StHoltzmann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First you're flying, and then everything is crashing down.</p><p>This is a story about dumplings, ropes, euphoria, angst, and a hurricane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maximum Potential Intensity I: Confounding Factors

**Author's Note:**

> The beginning of the end: Part I of a 2 or 3 part finale.

The day after your midnight appointment with Holtzmann is a rough one. Nothing seems to be going right in the lab, and you can’t tell whether it’s a run of bad luck or the fact that you’re too tired to focus on your work. You notice your mentor talking with one of the other senior researchers in the hall around lunchtime. After a while, she comes in and goes over to your desk, where you are arguing with the error code that your program has just thrown you. “Hey,” she says. “What do you think about taking a sick day?”

“Do we even get sick days?” you ask, trying to sound lighthearted.

“Of course you do.” She looks at you, unamused. “Seriously, I think you ought to get some rest.”

“I’m fine,” you insist, feeling dread in your stomach at the thought of going back to your apartment alone.

“You’ll get more done tomorrow if you don’t have to spend it fixing the mistakes you made today,” she says, but she softens her words by adding, “Trust me, I’ve been there a few too many times.”

She continues to stand by your desk even when you don’t say anything. It’s obvious that her “suggestion” is non-negotiable.

“OK. I got it. I’m going.” You try to sound normal. It might even be working.

You head down to your bus stop. Naturally, you’ve just missed the bus, and naturally, it’s drizzling again and you don’t have an umbrella. You pull your hood up and hunch over your phone, just staring at it. You want to text Holtzmann, but you don’t know what you’d say. Behind you, a man is watching a live news stream. The anchor is going on and on about a possible storm on its way at the end of the week, really hyping it up. Apparently you’ve missed a couple days of news. You can’t work up the effort to care.

Wedged in a back corner of the bus on the way home, you get a text, but it’s just Seppälä asking if you’re okay. He can be all right sometimes. You assure him that you’re fine and lean your head on the window.

Just as you’re stepping off of the bus, you get another text. Let it go, Seppälä! But it’s not him—it’s Holtzmann.

_Sorry, but not, for the mother hen thing last night_

_Fact is I need your brain firing on all cylinders for the next thing I’m cooking up_

_So text me once you’ve had a couple nights of good sleep_

_I mean like 6-8 hours, for real_

_I want you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, recruit!_

Jeez. From Holtzmann, on a non-technical subject, that’s practically a three-hour lecture. But how are you going to get that much sleep? Doesn’t sound like you have a choice, though. Why is everyone so bossy today?

 _I’ll see what I can do_ , you reply _._

 _Keep me posted,_ she answers.

You stand at the corner for a minute. There’s a drugstore the opposite direction from your apartment. You drag yourself in on the principle that it’s worth a try, and come out with Benadryl and melatonin.

When you get home, you don’t bother turning on the lights. You just sit down on your sofa and close your eyes for a moment. How are you going to pass the time until evening? You have no idea.

Next thing you know, it’s mid-afternoon. You get off the sofa long enough to eat some food, take a warm shower, and change your clothes. You feel even more tired than you did before you took your unplanned nap. Your worry spiral is kept at bay by the fuzzy static filling your head, and you wonder why you’re about to try to get rid of the fatigue.

Not long after the sun is down at 6, you take the Benadryl and the melatonin. And a mug of warm milk, because why not. You don’t know if it’s of these efforts or your general level of sleep deprivation, but either way, you fall asleep almost as soon as you climb in the bed, and you don’t wake up until fourteen hours later.

The day passes well enough, even if your litany of worries is back in your head. You make yourself go home at a reasonable hour of the evening. You take the medicine again, and it works again: you fall asleep. The next morning, you text Holtzmann screenshots of your sleep record from your phone. She replies with a trophy emoji (and an elephant, for no apparent reason). Then she adds:

_How early can you make it? You gotta get home before the Evil Storm hits_

_If it’s not all BS,_ you reply. _Not working today, so whenever._

_Lemme wrap stuff up at HQ. Noon?_

_It’s in my calendar,_ you type hastily.

 _Don’t eat lunch,_ Holtzmann adds.

You reply with _???_ but you get no answer.

* * *

 

Holtzmann has the door propped open with a cement block, letting in the cool, damp air. Weird lyrics drift out of the warehouse:

 _There is a hole on Broadway_  
_No control, it's in my way_  
_I feel no goal. Where is my soul?  
_ _I got no reset for this game_

You peek in and Holtzmann yells, “Come in and close the door!”

You do as requested. There’s a smell in the warehouse that isn’t part of the usual mix of metal, grease, and ozone. “Are you…cooking?”

Holtzmann turns down the music as you approach. The tiny counter near the “kitchen” sink is covered in empty boxes and wrappers. She’s got the double electric burner set up on the table, along with a magnetic stirrer ceramic hot plate that’s obviously just been repurposed from her lab. The hot plate is stirring away at broth in a flask. One burner has a little frying pan with gyoza sizzling in it, and the other has a pot of udon noodles boiling. She has a shop apron on top of her mechanic’s jacket, and a pair of goggles pushed up on her forehead is keeping her curls at bay.

There’s also a pan of piping-hot brownies on the table. “Don’t ask how I baked those,” says Holtzmann.

“But seriously. You cook?” you ask.

“Cooking’s fun when it’s nothing fancy and nobody’s making you do it. Just basic physics and chemistry,” Holtzmann says. She prods the gyoza. “We’ll be ready to eat as soon as the reactive carbonyl group in the sugar finishes making out with the nucleophilic amino group of the amino acid here, but I shouldn’t talk dirty at the table.”

You stifle a grin. “Did you just get a wild hair, or—?”

Holtzmann shrugs. “Something like that. Though yesterday we finally put the ol’ kibosh on something that could’ve become real bad news.” She high-fives herself. “Now, siddown.”

Holtzmann pulls out two small—obviously lab-grade—mixing bowls, then fills them with udon and broth. She sprinkles some chopped green onions on them, flips the gyoza onto plates, and passes you a slightly chipped mug with a 1980s Doctor Who logo on it. The hot water kettle is ready, and there are tea bags and hot cocoa packets next to it.

You’re at a loss for words. “This is…nice.” And it is. “Thank you.”

“Eat it already. There’re kids starving on Europa, y’know.”

Holtzmann must have gone to some trouble despite her dismissive words, because the food is actually really good. It’s one of the best meals you’ve had in a while, in fact. You manage some chat about the weather—the edge of the storm is supposed to come in late tonight, and it’ll probably miss anything important. You’re glad the dumb storm exists, hype and all, so that you have something safe to talk about.

After you lick the brownie crumbs from your fingers, Holtzmann says, “I hope you’re not too full to go upstairs.”

You shake your head. “I’ll walk around for a couple of minutes and then I’ll be good to go.”

“Meetcha there.”

Holtzmann seems a little…off today. You have no idea what that might mean, though. The meal kind of threw you, and you don’t know if she’s just preoccupied, or she’s excited about something, or she’s upset about something. You walk around for a little bit, then go change out of your clothes and join her in the loft.

Holtzmann hands you a piece of paper as soon as she sees you. It’s a handwritten…menu? Holtzmann is tapping a pencil against her teeth and hovering as you look it over. You read her scrawls and realize that it’s a list of almost everything she’s tested on you so far. A few things are missing, like the chair and the sensory deprivation pod, but it’s still a long list. The inflating gag and the posture collar have been replaced with the single new item, described as an “over-the-mouth gag with osculation simulator.”

“You ready for some jambalaya? Pick as many as you want, as long as they're compatible,” she says. “I have a finishing touch that should tie everything together.” The familiar wicked gleam is back in her eyes as she hands you the pencil.

“Right.” You look it over. Choices—that’s new. You tick the boxes for the new gag, the electrified nipple clamps (minus the tongue clip), the internal clitoral stimulator, and the hands-free vibrator with the 3-D printed covering that makes it fit you perfectly. Then you hand it to Holtzmann.

“Excellent choices, madame,” she says, in the most ridiculous French accent you’ve ever heard. “First, your appetizer.” The shop apron gone, she pulls out what looks like a narrow length of parachute silk from her coat pocket and approaches you. “More comfortable than the goggles for this,” she explains. You nod and let her wrap it three times around your eyes. She ties it firmly at the back of your head. Her fingers brush your spine as she straightens out the trailing ends of the blindfold. “Now, don’t move.”

You hear Holtzmann dragging something large across the floor, and then letting the end she was dragging smack onto the floor. There’s a whirr above your head, and the sound of Holtzmann carrying things out of a storage room. “You remember your nonverbal safe word, right?”

“Sure.” You hold a hand up in the Vulcan greeting, and she laughs.

“Good,” she says, very close to you. “Open your mouth just a little. There you go—now bite down and close your lips.” There’s a sort of silicone tab in your mouth. Then something complex is being strapped across your mouth and chin. It’s pulled tight. Your body is already responding.

“Hold out your hands, like I’m about to put a torpedo in ‘em,” Holtzmann says. Weird, but you get it. You hold your hands out, palm up. Something clinks into your palms—oh. The clamps. “Please to self-apply.”

You take a deep breath through your nose and hold your left breast so that you can clamp it, trying not to flinch away from yourself.

“Aw c’mon,” says Holtzmann. “I know you can do better than that.”

You grit your teeth and reapply it more firmly. By the time you do the other breast, your left nipple has already gone from feeling pinched to throbbing pleasantly, accentuated by a faint electrical buzz. Now that you’ve applied the set, it’ll take care of itself: before your nipples have had too much to be safe, it’ll expand, and then contract again a few minutes later. A marketable feature, you think, if Holtzmann wants to get a patent. She’s a goddamn genius, and not just in particle physics.

“All right. You’re going to meet my new widget before we add on your other selections.” She fastens something around your waist, wrists, and ankles. Something is attached to various points on the cuffs—you feel it brushing the length of your body—but you can’t tell what it is. “And don’t worry. We don’t have ants. Or snakes.”

You can’t ask what that means, so you just wait. You hear her step back. “3…2…1…let’s go!”

There’s a tickling along all of your limbs. Something is moving around them. It feels soft, maybe like…oh, like rope, sort of, but very nice (and oddly firm) rope. It’s wrapping around your arms over and over, slowly pulling them behind you and then binding your forearms together. Your hands aren’t tied, so you can still signal if you need to, but your arms are completely immobile. The autonomous rope, or whatever it is, slides across your hips and your groin, crosses your chest, slides down your spine, spins around and around your thighs. You can’t keep track of where it’s going or what it’s doing, but it’s hypnotic.

Holtzmann says, “Raise your right leg.” You do, and you feel the wrapped rope gently bend your leg for you. Then your lower leg is tucked up and bound firmly to your thigh. You wobble on your left foot, but you discover that it’s impossible for you to fall. You’re being supported from every angle. It’s not exactly what you’d call comfortable, but questions of comfort don’t seem at all relevant at the moment.

“And your left foot.”

OK, not falling is one thing, but having _no_ feet on the ground? You want to tell her that’s impossible, but you can’t, and besides, you trust her. You raise your left foot hesitantly and you feel yourself lifted up slightly. Having neither foot on the ground is disorienting, like you’ve just stepped into thin air. The frisson you feel is delicious, and when it fades, you feel not just suspended off of the ground, but as though you’re floating in a warm, dark fog.

There’s a little pressure on your shoulders, as your upper torso is pulled down and back and your legs are pulled up. You think your head is parallel to the floor now, maybe, while your legs are above you. You feel the ropes moving and your legs are moved apart. Then you’re rotating, you think. You didn’t feel a push, so there must be a motor overhead. You’re glad that you don’t get motion sick. For a few minutes—seconds? Half an hour?—you just rotate. You feel like your brain has shut down; it’s not frightening, but intensely relieving. You’re just present in the warmth and the darkness, and there’s very little else in your internal universe.

Other than Holtzmann, of course. “This is convenient,” she says. You drift to a more-or-less stop, and you feel her slim fingers touching you, applying the electrodes for the internal clitoral stimulator—the first gadget, from the very first test you did for her. “It looks like you’re ready for the last thing on your list.”

You are _very_ ready.

She slides the hands-free vibrator inside of you. It’s a complex shape. One end covers your mons and clit, and then there are two prongs inside. One is thinner and relatively short; it curls forward and helps the vibrator stay on while vibrating your G-spot. The other prong is fatter and longer. With its custom covering, it fills you perfectly. It turns on right away, buzzing and stroking gently.

You hear Holtzmann dragging something under you. Then she steps back and you hear her say, “Liftoff!”

You feel yourself rising. You can’t tell how far. You might be 20 centimeters off the ground, or 20 meters. Your head is pulled down a little, so that your body describes an arc. You wonder how you look—how you look to _Holtzmann_ , in particular, but the thought drifts away. You’re rotating again, lost and floating.

The wired chain connecting the nipple clamps suddenly vibrates in a different way, and then your breasts are tugged and pulled up. There must be a rope on a pulley or something, looped around the chain. It’s intense and you want to gasp, but all you can do is toss your head.

Then you feel a kiss—an extremely realistic kiss. You could almost imagine that Holtzmann has grown wings and is flying above you, but it’s the new gag. She must have made some kind of breakthrough. You push your mouth against the silky material, unable to imagine anything except her face, and you groan. You could just float and kiss the phantom Holtzmann for days.

After a while, the vibrator moves more firmly inside of you and begins to buzz with more intensity. And you begin to feel the entire structure of your clitoris light up with pleasure. Your nipples are pulsating again, after a short break that you hardly even noticed.

Without meaning to, you’re making more noise than usual. Even with the gag in your mouth, you produce a wide array of sounds: grunts as the vibrator thrusts inside of you, moans when there’s a surge in your clitoris, whimpers when the clamps reactivate on your increasingly sensitive nipples and the rope around the chain goes tight again.

You know that Holtzmann is there and can hear you, but the part of your brain that deals in your inhibitions has completely abandoned its position, along with the parts that worry and agonize. Your body is entirely running the show now.

Three times, everything fades down to a faint hum, and you just drift. If you could bottle this feeling, you would. Every nerve end is purring, and you’re surrounded by…well, you don’t have a word for it, but it comes from the trust you have in Holtzmann and from the careful attention that she pays to you.

After the third lull, the vibrator and the clitoral stimulation ramp up more than ever. Sparks and lightning illuminate the darkness you’re floating in. Is that thunder in the distance, or just your pulse rushing in your ears?

More than once, you think you’re beginning to come, but each time it’s replaced by an even stronger surge, and you can’t tell when it’s going to end.

When you finally come to a complete climax, it’s explosive. The warm darkness that you had been drifting in rips apart, and all you see behind your eyelids is a burst of stars. You’re taut, straining against the ropes, head thrown as far back as you can.

You stay that way for what seems like a long time, twitching as shards of your orgasm continue to shoot through you.

Finally, it fades completely, and you sag against the ropes. You don’t even feel yourself being lowered, but you do feel Holtzmann’s strong arms catching you and lowering you to what feels like a thick foam pad. You feel the ropes gently undoing themselves and being drawn away, and the electrodes and vibrator carefully taken out. Then your gag comes off, and you just gasp for a moment. At last, Holtzmann unties the blindfold.

You just stare at her for a moment. The world feels strange to you.

Holtzmann’s eyebrows pinch together. “What happened? Did I fuck up? I don’t have a manual, but I’m gonna guess that’s _not_ what an optimal end state looks like.” There’s no goofiness in her face or tone at all.

“I…” _I’m fine_ , you were about to say, _that was great_. But then you realize that your eyes are welling with tears. “I—I don’t know what’s happening. I’m fine. Everything felt unbelievably, mindblowingly fantastic. Why am I…” You have to stop, because the tears are threatening to spill.

Holtzmann is wide-eyed. She finds a clean handkerchief in a pocket and presses it into your hand. You’re shivering. “I guess I fast-forwarded too much. Hold on.” She ducks into the supply room and comes out with a heavy quilt, which she wraps around you. She hunkers down next to you and wraps her arms around her knees, watching you.

“N-no, I think this just happens sometimes. I heard a massage therapist say that occasionally her clients start to cry during a massage, and it’s not anything she did, just some kind of emotional thing going on in their lives, which gets unlocked or whatever by a pleasurable and intimate physical experience, and it has something to do with neurochemistry, increased parasympathetic nervous activity or—“ You stop yourself from babbling more and wipe your eyes. “I am genuinely OK. I swear. Let me get dressed and we’ll get back on track.”

Holtzmann helps you up cautiously. You’re a little stiff, but that wears off quickly.

When you come out of the bathroom, Holtzmann is still there rather than downstairs with the paperwork. She has the quilt over her arm and walks down the stairs beside you wordlessly. When you get to the table, she holds out the blanket and you take it. Its weight and warmth feel comforting. She puts the hot water kettle back on and makes you both some cocoa.

After you’ve had a few sips, you ask her where the paperwork is.

“It can wait,” she says. “It’s not going to self-destruct. You, on the other hand…”

You nod and settle back until you feel more human. “I’m not kidding, though. I’m definitely wrung out, but it was…the most incredible experience I’ve ever had. So, so good.” And that’s true. It’s also true that you feel as though you’ve been broken—shattered into a thousand pieces and not put back together.

But there’s no need to burden Holtzmann with that, when you can’t even make sense of it yourself.

“Your feedback is highly appreciated, and thank you for shopping S-Mart,” she says, and the dimple is back.

Finally, you demand the paperwork, and start to fill it out. It’s later than you expected, but you don’t have any plans for the rest of the day, so it doesn’t matter. Holtzmann is looking up at the rain-pounded skylight while you work, and eventually she comes back to the table, carrying her sticker-covered laptop. She opens it up and does a few things, then looks at you. “Where do you live?”

“That’s confidential,” you say. “What’s up?”

“Ah...duh. Check your phone then. Apparently this storm has become a hurricane again, and it’s taken a turn toward the city. It’s looking like Sandy II: Electric Boogaloo: The Quickening: This Time It’s Personal: The Revenge.”

You weren’t in NYC when Hurricane Sandy hit, but you know it was bad. You check social media and the weather. “Fuck. It looks like there’s already flooding between here and there. My bus and subway line are stopped. Scratch that—all the subway lines are stopped.”

Holtzmann looks up. “Yeah. Meteorology’s not my field, but this looks like the opposite of a good time. Guess you’re staying here. And me with no more completed prototypes…” She makes a weak attempt at a laugh, and you wonder, once again, what’s going on.

You hand her your completed paperwork, and as she takes it without looking at you, it hits you.

She found out.

Somehow, she found out, either that you’re in related fields and that you’re probably familiar with each other’s research, or that you’ve had a crush on her all along. Or both. There’s a sick feeling in your stomach.

“So, the sleepover situation makes this super awkward instead of just really awkward,” Holtzmann says. She stands up and starts pacing. She’s not quite looking at you, and she’s fiddling with her left ear. “I gotta tell you a thing.”

“No!” You get up and move in front of her. The quilt falls to the floor. “No, don’t. Let me tellyou something first. Please.”

Holtzmann looks at you with a completely unreadable expression, but she doesn’t say anything, so you continue.

“I need to come clean with you about two things. First, I am a terrible research subject and—and an even worse scientist,” you say. You’ve rehearsed this in your head a thousand times, lying in bed at night, but now it’s hard to make the words come. “I wasn’t up front with you on the paperwork when I said there wasn’t anything that would disqualify me. I didn’t disclose some critical things.” Ugh. Deep breath. “I’m in a related field, and I’ve read all of your papers, and supposedly you might have even been at one of my lectures, heaven only knows why. But basically, I’m not the clean slate that I should have been, and I’m afraid I’ve contaminated, or even invalidated, all of your data. For what it’s worth, I—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Holtzmann’s face is more serious than you've ever seen it, but you think you can see hurt and confusion in her eyes. She crosses her arms.

You take another deep breath, about to confess that your harmless crush isn’t so harmless anymore, and you haven’t been impartial for a _while_ now. But you only get as far as “I’m afraid the second thing is worse—“ when her phone suddenly interrupts.

 _It’s the end of the world as we know it_  
_It’s the end of the world as we know it  
_ _And I —_

Holtzmann makes a faint growling noise and answers. “Abby, now is  _not_ a g—what?”

You sit back down, miserably, while Holtzmann puts the phone between her shoulder and her ear. “Whaaaaat…But we slam-dunked that—oh, it has friends? … _All_ Class VI? … This is gonna be some polka party.” She kicks off her purple Chucks and pulls on one sturdy-looking leather boot, then hops around to find the other.

“A T5 is no shock, then—shush, Abby, you’re drowning out Patty. _T5s_? Plural? I hate plurals.” Holtzmann hustles past you and digs around in the pile of clothes on and around the futon. She pulls out a heavy denim shirt and buttons it up over her cartoon astronaut t-shirt, then shrugs into a well-worn leather motorcycle jacket, all without putting the phone down.

“Yep, ASAP… I’ll have to meet you there. What? Pshaw. No problem. I was sealing some parts the other day…” She almost glances at you, but then doesn’t. “So then I did a bunch of sealing on the bike, for the heck of it. Shhh, Erin. Trust me, I’m a genius. Also, I’m _totally_ gonna drive on the sidewalk! … Uh-huh. Bye. Don’t do anything I would do!”

Holtzmann hangs up. “You stay here,” she says, putting on a pair of driving gloves. “I have to go, _now_. It’s not safe out there, but it’s not gonna flood here.” She grabs a piece of the paperwork, flips it over and hastily scrawls on it:

 _Return ETA = 7 PM._  
_Door guest pin 1984 if you HAVE TO go in and out._  
_Power out, generator comes on - no lights = normal.  
_ _DO NOT LEAVE UNTIL STORM IS OVER._

She pushes it toward you, slides her motorcycle goggles over her eyes, and sprints to the door. You’re open-mouthed. She yanks the door open, and you’re surprised by how loud the rain is.

Holtzmann pauses for a split second, framed in the doorway with her back to you. You can just barely hear her say, “We’re gonna finish this conversation.” Then she’s out the door.

“B—be careful,” you say to the closed door, and your voice cracks.

A moment later you hear her motorcycle engine rev. Thunder bursts overhead, and when the rumbling fades away, Holtzmann is gone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, the end is nigh! I wasn't expecting it to run this long, so I'm going to be splitting it up into 2 or 3 parts. I hope you'll hang around and see what happens in Part II, though it's probably going to be a few days. (Duty calls...)
> 
> Please forgive me if I screw up something NYC- or hurricane-related. It's all a metaphor anyway, right? Sure.
> 
> Anyway, I'm dying to hear your reactions.
> 
> \- ERRATA -
> 
> Please do not take medications or supplements for insomnia without speaking to a doctor (and especially don’t combine them on your own).
> 
> Suspension + gags = generally a bad idea in real life (unless you like aspirating your own vomit). In the fic I’m assuming that Holtzmann knows that her subject doesn’t get motion sickness and that she’s very closely monitoring vital signs. Head down suspension is generally a bad idea, too; even a short fall is bad news if you land on your head. Holtz’s got special mad science rope and special mad science foam, though, so it’s safe, y’see? 
> 
> Cibo Matto, "Sci Fi Wasabi": [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMrAMAm6RxE), [lyrics](http://genius.com/Cibo-matto-sci-fi-wasabi-lyrics)
> 
> R.E.M., "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)": [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY), [lyrics](http://genius.com/Rem-its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-fine-lyrics)


End file.
